The book is essentially a looking glass into the largest migration in American history within a short period of time. Between 1930 and 1940, approximately 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states due to drought conditions and migrated towards the West coast only to find that the Great depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left. The large scale worker movement created demand supply imbalance, depressed earnings and created conditions rife for exploitation of the displaced migrant workers.
The novel is a commentary of the period with poverty, migration, labor rights and public policy as the key themes of the narrative using the trials and tribulations of a fictional family-the Joads from Sallisaw Oklahoma, who drove in a Hudson Motor car company saloon converted to a truck along highway 66 to reach California. When they finally reach the Promised Land after personal tragedies and loss, what they witness is unwelcome social treatment, colluding business interests and hostile law enforcement.
To a great extent the world interprets human history in terms of the stories, poems and pictures. The brilliance of the book ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is that it distilled the undeserved poverty and displacement of the self-respecting White American Joad family as representative of the collective history of the nameless multitudes that lived the era..
Although simplification of history comes with its own perils, what we get in the novel are unfaultable heroes (the insufferable Ma Joad and Tom Joad the son who breaks the law but has a heart of gold). The writer doesn’t veil his sympathy for migrants and workers' movement so we have a clear annotation of the good vs. evil clash.
When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damnedest to rip a reader's nerves to rags."
The novel is a commentary of the period with poverty, migration, labor rights and public policy as the key themes of the narrative using the trials and tribulations of a fictional family-the Joads from Sallisaw Oklahoma, who drove in a Hudson Motor car company saloon converted to a truck along highway 66 to reach California. When they finally reach the Promised Land after personal tragedies and loss, what they witness is unwelcome social treatment, colluding business interests and hostile law enforcement.
To a great extent the world interprets human history in terms of the stories, poems and pictures. The brilliance of the book ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is that it distilled the undeserved poverty and displacement of the self-respecting White American Joad family as representative of the collective history of the nameless multitudes that lived the era..
Although simplification of history comes with its own perils, what we get in the novel are unfaultable heroes (the insufferable Ma Joad and Tom Joad the son who breaks the law but has a heart of gold). The writer doesn’t veil his sympathy for migrants and workers' movement so we have a clear annotation of the good vs. evil clash.
When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damnedest to rip a reader's nerves to rags."
I guess when I weigh the book against the stated objective of the author, I agree that the book has served its purpose.
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